Are there any other home educating parents on here who want to chat? Feeling a little bit isolated in this area at the moment. There are plenty of home educating people out there, but not so many I am finding who are also trying to deal with all the animals, gardens, etc... at the same time. Love it, but also needing to know how other people do it as well... My wee ones are 5, 4 and 2.

We are :) My two are 5 and 3. They help out a fair bit with the gardening (or at least play so I can get on with it), but we don't have any livestock. There are a fair few families near us, home educating seems to be getting a lot more popular in the UK.

We are pretty isolated here, not many homeschooling families nearby (we live rurally) and even fewer that we click with in terms of philosophy. In fact, none within an hours drive. It must be great to have such a close support network. Would your two be interested in becoming pen-pals with my two of similar ages? My kids would love it, especially writing to people in another country!

Sure, I bet they would love that :) The eldest can only write a little bit at the moment though. We're lucky to have all sorts of families here, from super-structured to radical unschoolers, so there are all kinds of groups. Not sure what label we would fall under- somewhere in the middle, I guess. I've never read any HE books so I don't know much about the theories, we just do what works for us.

I have home educated for the last (almost) 30 years. My youngest is 17 so I feel as if I'm nearly retiring at last! Mine had pen pals when they were small and it was a great source of encouragement -- they used to collect stamps too so there was extra fun in getting the post! I found the best thing was our closeness as a family and the fun we had. We have a house choc a block with children's books and they read and read and read... We did have friends although not nearby with whom we met up -- and often had very long journeys by public transport in order to do so. As far as educational achievement goes I am now very proud of my statistician and my engineer -- the jury's out on what the youngest will be though! I'd encourage anyone to do home ed. it does not seem to matter what approach you take it can't be worse than school!

I am not a homeschooler, but I follow a blog of an amazing woman who homeschools all 9 of her kids as well as growing food, knitting them clothes and running a little ranch. Oh and a wool-dying business: